U.S. hammer thrower Gwen Berry turned away from the American flag as the national anthem played last month in celebration of her third-place finish in the Olympic Track and Field Team trials. Berry, who had qualified for her second U.S. Olympic team, faced the stands instead and held up a black shirt that read, “Activist Athlete.”
“I was p-ssed, to be honest,” Berry complained. “I feel like it was a setup, and they did it on purpose… I didn’t really want to be up there.”
As the national anthem played while Gwen Berry was on the podium after qualifying for the Olympics, she turned away from the flag and draped a T-shirt with the words "Activist Athlete" over her head.
She felt the timing of the anthem was "a setup": https://t.co/cE22DCQCxB pic.twitter.com/HPPnR2xXyr
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) June 27, 2021
Stop playing with me pic.twitter.com/WLN3clqOCM
— Gwen Berry OLY (@MzBerryThrows) June 27, 2021
The stunt, likely an audition for a Nike deal, indicates cultural currents emanating from the far-left dogma that characterizes the United States as an irredeemably racist empire picking up steam at breakneck speed. Just six years ago, Berry proudly posed with the stars and stripes in a photo that was posted on her own website.
https://twitter.com/sandyleevincent/status/1410227532176240643?s=20
Berry’s anti-American act while representing America drew the endorsement of the Biden administration, which refused to condemn her political performance.
“I haven’t spoken to the president specifically about this,” Biden Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday, but added that Berry had the full support of the White House regardless.
He would say of course, that part of that pride in our country means recognizing there are moments where we are — as a country, haven’t lived up to our highest ideals, and it means respecting the right of people, granted to them in the Constitution, to peacefully protest.
The statement from the White House is hardly surprising. Biden’s U.N. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield smeared her own country at the global forum in April, condemning the United States as infected with rampant white supremacy.
“I’ve seen for myself how the original sin of slavery, weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles,” said Thomas-Greenfield. “We have to acknowledge that we are an imperfect union, and have been since the beginning.”
Thomas-Greenfield’s comments were followed by New York Times editorial board member and MSNBC analyst Mara Gay claiming earlier this month the sight of “dozens of American flags” was disturbing.
“I was on Long Island this weekend, visiting a really dear friend, and I was really disturbed,” Gay said.
These are not fringe activists vilifying the United States as insidiously evil. These are some of the most prominent power players in the political establishment today, up to and including the White House, who have now appear to have taken over the Democratic Party. Last summer, a Quillette survey showed 44 percent of self-identifying liberals supported destroying the monument at Mount Rushmore. The Democratic Party endorsed the idea with a tweet:
Facing historic levels of such polarization, the United States is on track to politicizing patriotism. If the prior 18 months have illustrated anything, it’s that this very politicization could destroy the country.
Face masks became the most visible sign of pandemic polarization when they transformed from an alleged tool of viral mitigation to markers of a political stripe no different from progressive pronoun bios to signal one’s sex. Leftists who embraced face masks despite evidence to question their efficacy in the first place have still clung to their cloth coverings even post-vaccination. MSNBC’s Joy Reid, who is fully vaccinated, even bragged in prime-time television she was engaging in self-harm to own the cons.
“I am among the fully vaccinated,” Reid said in April after the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) updated guidelines to remove the mask outside. “I did go jogging today in the park. This is the mask I wore, with the doctor’s mask under it.”
Joy Reid says that she went jogging today while wearing two masks even though she is fully vaccinated pic.twitter.com/h7zFE9CzkW
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 28, 2021
The return to normal itself became marked with such polarization there are those on the left who seem not to want its return for the sake of defeating their political opponents. For as long as they’re politically popular among the president’s base, masks will be required on airplanes regardless of vaccination availability.
No small part of those on the American political left have now begun to hate their own country. Thankfully, a majority of Democrats will celebrate the 4th of July this weekend with the understanding that differences in opinion aim for the same goals of a more perfect union. Enough, however, ominously including many at the top of the political establishment, have become so convinced of American evil — as they represent the U.S. on the global stage — to raise serious concerns about the nation’s future.
A nation that hates itself cannot survive as a governable nation, and when that hatred is polarized, it will only feed on itself.
Increasingly convinced this is subtly the most important divide in our politics. https://t.co/TD6uF4mfoL
— Emily Jashinsky (@emilyjashinsky) June 22, 2021
That’s why the culture war is so important, particularly in schools where the next generation is actively indoctrinated with lessons that teach American racism as opposed to American exceptionalism. There’s a reason why aggressively woke children have now permeated the nation’s legacy institutions to foster the racist concepts enshrined in critical race theory from corporate newsrooms to corporate boardrooms.
This is a call on progressives to take a step back and acknowledge that in the end, America is a truly exceptional nation that empowers them with the very rights they’ve embraced to tear it down. They might want to think through the historically likely results of doing so.
